InFocus News

This story is a part of a Harvest Public Media series on CO2 pipelines. Read our first story here.

Karen Brocklesby describes herself as a farm wife and a mother — but over the past several months, she’s also become somewhat of an activist.

Brocklesby lives in Christian County, Illinois. She’s one of many rural landowners there fighting to keep a company called Navigator Ventures LLC from injecting carbon dioxide beneath her farmland.

“This potential for damaging the water for the future – to me, it just is foolishness. Especially in areas that are good farming areas,” Brockelsby said.

Brockelsby has a list of concerns about carbon sequestration. But chief among them is the worry that sequestered carbon could contaminate the area’s water supply.

“It would be a danger to both our agriculture production and, even more importantly, to the drinking water for everybody who lives in this area,” she said.

Brocklesby isn’t alone. Christian County is awash in signs and billboards urging residents to protect the aquifer from pipeline projects.

The Navigator pipeline that Brockelsby and her neighbors oppose would carry CO2 from ethanol plants through five states, including Iowa and Nebraska, to two injection sites in central Illinois. The CO2 would then be pumped 6,000 feet underground into “pore space” — tiny areas in the subsurface that are unoccupied by solid material.

And Navigator’s pipeline isn’t the only project being proposed in the Midwest. Wolf Carbon Solutions also plans to sink CO2 underground in Illinois, while Summit Carbon Solutions proposes capturing CO2 from ethanol plants in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota and injecting it underground in North Dakota.

Landowners like Brockelsby have been organizing for months to stop companies from acquiring the land rights they need to store carbon.

“I would like to slow them down to the point where they give up on Illinois entirely,” Brockelsby said.

The companies are targeting the state because of a 60,000-square-mile basin known as the Mount Simon Sandstone that geologists like Sallie Greenberg say is ideal for carbon storage.

“In geologic storage you look for something that is a container and something that is a seal,” explained Greenberg, who is a principal research scientist with the Illinois Geological Survey.

The bottom of the Illinois basin is lined with layers of rock that Greenberg compares it to a seven-layer salad. The bottom layer is composed of highly permeable sandstone and eventually capped by an impermeable layer of shale.

It’s the particular configuration of those different types of rocks that make Illinois “highly suitable” for the geologic storage of carbon dioxide, Greenberg said.

This kind of project isn’t new.

The Mount Simon Sandstone is already storing over a million metric tons of CO2 captured from the Archer Daniels Midland ethanol plant as part of a test project led by Greenburg called the Illinois Basin-Decatur Project.

The project was designed to test carbon capture and storage technology, or CCS, at a commercial scale. And it’s an example that Navigator CO2 points to as evidence that carbon sequestration works.

“Demonstration projects like ADM have been able to prove points, over time, that this absolutely can be done successfully and safely,” said Navigator spokesperson Elizabeth Burns-Thompson.

But whereas ADM is storing around a million metric tons of carbon, Burns-Thompson has said that Navigator will capture 15-million metric tons each year.

And that makes landowners like Brockelsby nervous.

“I mean what they’re doing at ADM I think is, like, 3% of what they’re proposing to do here in my neighborhood,” she said.

Large scale sequestration projects have been done before. The problem, said John Harju of the Energy and Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota, is that there haven’t been that many.

“There's not a lot of on the ground projects. And, you know, where do you go look at a few projects to build confidence that this does work?” Harju said.

Harju points to the Dakota Gasification Company. For over 20 years the company has been sequestering millions of tons of CO2 in a geologic formation called the Williston Basin that underlies parts of the Dakotas, Montana and southern Saskatechewan.

That basin has the same kind of seven-layer salad structure as the Mount Simon Sandstone, which is why Summit Carbon Solutions is proposing a sequestration site just north of Bismarck, North Dakota.

But landowners there have questions, and many are concerned about a North Dakota law that could compel them to sell pore space beneath their land to pipeline companies.

State Sen. Jeff Magrum said landowners should have the right not to sell, especially as they grapple with worries over safety.

“There are concerns we have because this is all so new,” said Magrum, a Republican who represents part of rural Bismarck.

He introduced a bill in January that would require companies to get at least 85% of landowners to sign on voluntarily before others could be forced to do so through eminent domain.

The measure failed, leaving the law at the current rate of 60%.

While the proliferation of companies hoping to capture and store carbon underground may be new, Greenberg explained that the science behind sequestration isn’t.

“Storage of carbon dioxide is a relatively new application. It is not an untested set of technological advancements because we’ve been doing this (for) a hundred years.”

Greenberg said the technology is an amalgamation of existing methods based on 100 years of oil and gas production. The technology has long been used in the process of enhanced oil recovery — the process of injecting carbon dioxide recovered from oil and gas production into depleted reservoirs to extract more hydrocarbons.

But when it comes to public perspective, injecting carbon dioxide into an oil field is not the same thing as pumping it underneath Karen Brockelsby’s farmland. And that’s a bind Harju understands.

“The projects are not proliferous yet,” he said. “But those that have been conducted are reassuring.”

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

Copyright 2023 KCUR 89.3. To see more, visit KCUR 89.3.

WSIU's Jennifer Fuller talks with Interim SIU Aviation Director Jose Ruiz about the shortage of pilots, and what can be done

Every fall, fewer than 1 in 10 applicants to the University of Chicago walk beneath a flock of gargoyles adorning a fortresslike stone gate onto the main quad as admitted students.

Years ago, Alana Nii’s father was one of them.

“He had a great time,” said Nii, who grew up in Virginia. “And he really believes in UChicago as an institution.”

So Nii applied too. When she did, she got to check a box indicating she was a family member of an alumnus and warranted special consideration.

It’s a box she says shouldn’t exist. But it does, on applications to hundreds of selective universities across the country. Locally, both the University of Chicago and Northwestern have held onto the practice, called legacy admissions — despite concerns over its impact on students from historically marginalized communities.

But the pressure on these schools to reconsider the practice is growing.

Over 100 selective institutions have ended their legacy admissions policies in recent years. And in June, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on race-conscious admissions. The justices are expected to bar universities from considering race when selecting students. This is likely to prompt schools to consider ending other practices that favor white, wealthier students at the expense of historically disadvantaged ones.

“We’re not allowed to do that … but we’ll still consider where your mommy or daddy went to college? We’ll still give this birthright advantage to people?” said James Murphy, an advocate for more equitable admissions policies with the nonprofit Education Reform Now. “That just seems to me an impossible position for any ethical institution to hold.”

Top officials at both Northwestern and UChicago declined interview requests. Leaders at other selective universities have defended legacy admissions as a way to maintain and build community amongst graduates. But critics say giving preference to applicants who are related to alumni unfairly restricts access to highly selective universities that educate many of society’s most influential decision makers.

“The main argument I’ve heard for legacies is … kids who are legacies … are more suited for the university from just a values standpoint, or care more about the university … or are willing to put in more work,” said Nii, now a first-year student at UChicago. “But if that’s true, then that should show through your application, and the end result should be the same.”

Data reported by Northwestern and UChicago show the schools give as much consideration to legacy status as they do to race. Neither is weighed as heavily as academics or extracurriculars.

“It doesn’t come down to, ‘Are people who aren’t qualified getting in because of legacy?’ ” Murphy said. “It’s … ‘Is legacy a good way to break a tie? Is legacy a good way to decide between two incredibly qualified, super talented students?’ ”

Some university leaders might answer yes out of a desire to keep alumni close.

“There’s a reasonable desire to say, ‘Let’s create generations of students, and build families that are connected to the university,’ ” said Alex Seeskin, director of the To&Through Project, an education research group at UChicago. “And I think there’s an assumption that those types of connections yield or lead to donations.”

University presidents and trustees may also fear backlash from alumni who want to build their family’s connection to their alma mater — and who want their children to receive special consideration.

“They’re going to be taking phone calls,” Murphy said. “And at board meetings, people are going to be yelling at them about how you’ve ruined it for their children.”

Historians say legacy admissions policies began about 100 years ago. Jewish and immigrant students had started applying in larger numbers to Ivy League colleges. Leaders at those institutions wanted to keep their student bodies white and wealthy. Giving preference to applicants who were related to alumni did just that.

Some say it still does.

“By design, it’s meant to keep … students at an institution static,” Seeskin said. “Because it’s trying to draw explicit connections between generations of students that go back to times when there were more explicit policies, about … who could and couldn’t access selective colleges.

Universities are not required to report the number or demographics of legacy students they admit. (And UChicago and Northwestern don’t.) But data made public in a lawsuit against Harvard revealed the disparities the policy can perpetuate. Harvard’s most academically accomplished legacy applicants were more than twice as likely to get in than equally accomplished peers from low-income families.

“If we care about closing the racial wealth gap, then we have to look at who is admitted to our most selective higher education institutions,” Seeskin said. “Because getting access to those institutions … is the clearest pathway we have in our society to becoming wealthy.”

In recent years UChicago and Northwestern have publicized efforts to make their universities more inclusive and equitable, including the addition and expansion of need-based scholarship programs. But both schools have seen their share of Black students grow only minimally, according to federal data, to approximately 6%.

Seeskin doesn’t blame legacy admissions entirely. There are other preferences that also advantage white and wealthy students, including for athletes and for children of faculty. But, he said, it certainly doesn’t help. He questions why UChicago and Northwestern have held onto the policy while other selective universities have dropped it. Seeskin points to their endowments, which both exceed $10 billion and, he says, could likely withstand a dip in alumni contributions.

“The question … for both of these presidents is, ‘Do you want to lead or do you want to follow?’ ” he said.

If they truly want to make equity and inclusion a priority, Seeskin said, ending legacy admissions should be their first step.

Lawmakers are in the process of shaping one of the biggest legislative packages moving through Congress this year: the 2023 Farm Bill.

Few Americans are farmers, yet the bill still has a big impact on the rest of us.

“Anybody who eats or wears clothes that are generated from natural fibers, is actually touched by the farm bill,” said Amy Hagerman, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University and a state extension specialist for agriculture and food policy.

Congress renews the farm bill about every five years to set the stage for our food and farming systems — including what crops farmers plant.

The bill controls how billions of taxpayer dollars are used to set up crop insurance, fund crop subsidies and agricultural research to assist food production, as well as invest in sustainable agricultural practices. It also maintains food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which supports nearly 42 million Americans.

The farm bill consists of about a dozen sections called titles, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates the 2023 Farm Bill will cost about $709 billion over the next five years — the most expensive on record. Much of that money is spent on four major titles: nutrition, crop insurance, commodities and conservation.

With the $31 trillion debt ceiling crisis looming over lawmakers, agriculture policy experts say the cost of programs will drive farm bill 2023 policy discussions.

“There will be intense conversations around those different priorities,” Hagerman said.

A divided Congress, with Republicans having a slim majority in the House and Democrats in the Senate, sets the stage for tough negotiations as the Sep. 30 deadline approaches, and the 2018 Farm Bill expires.

The Nutrition Title is the biggest piece of the farm bill pie. It’s estimated to account for 85% of farm bill spending — up nearly 10% from the 2018 Farm Bill — to support low-income food assistance programs like SNAP.

“When you get 40-some million people in a program, it's going to spend a lot of money, and so that's just the reality of it,” said Jonathan Coppess, associate professor and director of the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at the University of Illinois.

As lawmakers look at ways to scale back federal spending, Coppess said some are looking to trim from SNAP.

“If budget is driving our whole discussion, then we're looking around for big numbers to cut,” he said. “And this is a big number, so it gets the first focus on cutting.”

Coppess said the fight to slash SNAP isn’t new when it comes to farm bill negotiations. House Republicans introduced a bill earlier this year that would establish stricter eligibility requirements, including making more SNAP participants subject to work requirements. SNAP already has work requirements and limits food assistance to three months of every three years for able-bodied adults ages 18 to 49 without dependents.

“The work requirements discussion that we hear about is rooted in this kind of mindset … that somehow these [SNAP] policies are motivating people not to work,” he said.

While Republican lawmakers, such as Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D) argue "work is the best pathway out of poverty,” Democratic lawmakers are opposed to making cuts to SNAP benefits, saying it would hurt families that most need assistance.

Meanwhile, the current U.S. unemployment rate is at 3.4%, the lowest it’s been since 1969.

The Crop Insurance Title is the second-most expensive piece of the farm bill and is estimated to account for 7% of the bill’s spending.

The title controls and funds an insurance program farmers and ranchers can purchase to protect against losing their crops to natural disasters like drought or damaging storms — but only a handful of crops are eligible for coverage.

More than 80% of all planted corn, soybean, wheat and cotton crops in the U.S. are covered by crop insurance policies on average, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, while very few fruit, vegetable and organic farms receive coverage.

Patrick Westhoff, the director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri, said the discussion to reform the crop insurance program and make it more accessible to smaller farmers has risen in previous farm bill cycles.

But Westhoff said it can be an expensive process, even for a special commodity.

“They're trying to find ways to make that a more affordable process to make it easier to get those programs established, even for some products that don't have as high of a value of production as some of the major crops,” he said.

While some farmers are content with the existing crop insurance program, Westhoff said others are pushing lawmakers to strengthen the program for farmers experiencing more and more crop losses due to climate change. In recent years farmers have received billions of dollars in crop insurance payouts due to extreme weather.

“We may well have a record level of indemnity payments for losses incurred because of crop problems in 2022,” Westhoff said. “But it's also because crop insurance is going to pay based on the value of the crops insured. So if prices are higher now than they were 10 or 20 years ago, that means the value of the crop’s insurance is higher.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimates crop insurance will cost over $48 billion over the next five years, which makes it another place lawmakers might look to cut spending on or use as a leveraging tool to get the changes they want in the title, Westhoff said.

The Commodities Title is the third major title in the farm bill and is estimated to cost $27.6 billion over the next five years for 4% of total farm bill spending.

It provides subsidy payments, money paid by the federal government, to farmers that grow certain commodities like corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton when the price of a commodity crop drops below a certain threshold.

It was a part of the original 1933 Farm Bill, a time when a quarter of the U.S. population was farmers, and the program was intended to secure the food supply by keeping farmers in business.

But it’s a policy some lawmakers and farmer advocacy groups argue only benefits large farms, Westhoff said. The Environmental Working Group, a progressive advocacy organization, recently called attention to nearly 20,000 farmers having received subsidies for 37 consecutive years.

“For the most part, the programs are set up to provide payments that are proportional to the value of production on a farm. So the larger the farm, the larger the payments,” Westhoff said.

Meanwhile, some farmers are pushing lawmakers to raise market prices as they haven’t kept up with inflation, and as a result, they have received little to no commodity payments, he said.

“We have relatively high prices for most agricultural products today,” Westhoff said. “Well above [market] prices. So under current policies, the commodity title will spend very little money in the current year.”

Crop insurance and commodity programs both indirectly impact consumer food costs as they go toward supporting the crops farmers grow and livestock ranchers raise, but Westhoff said, it’s not something that would impact grocery store prices overnight.

The Conservation Title is estimated to take up 3% of the 2023 farm bill spending, with a projected cost of $23.1 billion over the next five years.

It covers voluntary federal programs that encourage farmers to take on agricultural practices intended to conserve natural resources. Conservation programs aim to reduce soil erosion, protect drinking water, preserve wildlife habitat, and preserve and restore forests and wetlands.

Coppess, of the University of Illinois, said climate change will be at the center of lawmakers’ conversations surrounding the conservation title. The Inflation Reduction Act Congress passed last year invested $20 billion in conservation programs, specifically to invest in climate-smart practices over the next five years.

“This really historical investment from the Inflation Reduction Act around climate change is something we've not ever seen, to that degree, outside of the farm bill debate,” Coppess said.

Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already begun rolling out IRA funding, Hagerman, of Oklahoma State University, said it’s too early to tell how it will impact farm bill discussions.

“There's just so many different ways within and outside of the Conservation Title, that [investment in climate-smart practices] could come into or be done outside the farm bill,” Hagerman said. “I think this is a broader trend in moving in that direction, but with no one obvious path forward for accomplishing it.

Lawmakers in both the House and Senate need to agree on a new version of the farm bill and have the president sign off on it by Sept. 30, the expiration date of the 2018 Farm Bill.

If Congress doesn’t pass a new version in time, programs under each title are affected differently. Some programs have a permanent authorization, which means lawmakers can vote to extend them, which they've budgeted for. Other programs revert to rules from the original 1933 Farm Bill, while others just expire.

Historically, the farm bill has largely been a bipartisan effort, but with lawmakers focused on figuring out a debt ceiling plan, it could be difficult to get a bill passed in time this year.

“If they want to make any kind of big changes to that farm bill, you know, the pie is only a certain size,” Hagerman said. “So they're gonna have to make one piece smaller if they're going to make another piece larger, anywhere else.”

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues. 

Copyright 2023 KCUR 89.3. To see more, visit KCUR 89.3.

With sweeping changes taking effect for higher education in Florida, WSIU's Jennifer Fuller talked with Southern Illinois University System President Dan Mahony about his priorities for Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and more.

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In the past decade, the number of Illinois high schoolers earning early college credit from Advanced Placement or Dual Credit courses has skyrocketed.

To earn college credit from an Advanced Placement or AP high school course -- students have to pass a test at the end of the year. In Illinois, scoring a 3 or higher on that test qualifies students for at least some college credit at public colleges and universities. If it’s a private school or out-of-state, it’s a bit more complicated.

But, in the past 10 years, Illinois has had the largest percent increase in the country in high school graduates scoring a 3 or higher on the AP test. Last year, over 36,000 Illinois high school grads did it.

Dr. Erica Thieman is the director of the standards and instruction department at the Illinois State Board of Education. Thieman says AP exams give those students a jump-start towards a college degree, but even more importantly, she says, it can save them a lot of money.

“If you look at the amount of money that is being saved by our Illinois families, "she said, "when they get a three or higher, they don't have to pay for that college credit -- it's in the $200 million range."

It does cost students money to take the exam. Tests cost nearly $100 a pop, with many students taking multiple exams. But in Illinois, low-income students only have to pay $7 per exam thanks to supplemental state funding.

That can be a big deal, with the typical cost of college tuition per credit hour anywhere from around $100 to $1,000 in some cases.

The state also supplies grants for schools to enhance or add more AP courses and train teachers. Joliet Township High School District has received that grant several times, including last year.

Dr. Karla Guseman is the superintendent of the Joliet Township High School District.

She says expanding AP access and offerings has been a big priority for the last decade. That work culminated with Joliet Township winning “AP district of the year” a few years ago.

“We were at 138 Students with three or higher on an exam. In 2017, we were at 645,” said Guseman. “Those numbers continue to increase through 2019. But then the pandemic, [there was a] slow dip, but now we're working our way back up.”

Along with expanding the total number of students taking AP courses, Guseman says they’re also trying to expand access to low-income students and students of color. The vast majority of Advanced Placement programs don’t mirror the school’s student demographics.

And Joliet Township is closer than many districts. They’re a majority Hispanic district and Hispanic students make up 60% of students taking one or more AP classes. But Black students aren’t equally represented yet.

That holds with state trends. Out of all Illinois students who scored a 3 or higher on AP exams last year, only 3.6% were Black. That number hasn’t changed since 2012. But the number of Hispanic students has increased significantly statewide, from 12% to over 20%.

Suneal Kolluri says it speaks to the importance of culturally-relevant curriculum. He’s an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside. Kolluri’s researched AP courses and their impacts for years.

“If you have a curriculum that connects to students’ lives, to students’ communities," said Kolluri, "then I think you can, perhaps in a lot of respects, do a better job attracting more students."

He says, historically, the College Board, the nonprofit organization who crafts AP curriculum, hasn’t been great at connecting with Black students. There are current efforts, like a new AP African American Studies course. But even that has been criticized when the curriculum was changed after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened to ban it. The College Board says the governor’s words had nothing to do with their curriculum decisions.

Kolluri says there are more existential questions about AP too. Is it a good idea to push as many kids as possible into AP classes if many don’t pass the test? There’s also a question about the test itself. Students have to pass a test at the end of the year to earn college credit.

Many colleges and universities stopped looking at standardized tests like the ACT for admission and scholarships because they argue it’s not a good barometer to measure learning. Kolluri says the College Board is actually introducing more project-based assessments and portfolios.

The College Board also has a new initiative to expand AP’s influence in schools even more, called “Pre-AP.” These are regular, grade-level courses meant to set students up for future AP classes. It kicks off next year, and Dr. Karla Guseman at Joliet Township says they are investing in it.

“All students," she said, "will either be in a pre-AP class or an AP class."

Pre-Ap does raise some initial concerns from Professor Kolluri.

“Okay, so is the College Board going to teach every class at every high school?" he asked. "How much curricular control are we trying to cede from our public-school professionals?"

But, he says, even though the current system is flawed, when you talk to students taking AP classes -- they really like them.

“It could be that they're good classes and the best teachers teach them, which I think we kind of have a sense of,” said Kolluri.

He says it’s important to cultivate a space where kids are excited about learning and challenging themselves. And, for those who pass the test, the opportunity to save a bunch of money on college credit can be too good to pass up.

This story is a part of a Harvest Public Media series on CO2 pipelines.

Jeff Reints only has to look out across his field to see where most of his corn ends up.

“We're directly west of the Shell Rock POET ethanol plant approximately a short mile away,” he said while walking through corn stalks left from last year’s harvest.

Ethanol is a fantastic market for his corn, Reints said.

But when he found out the nearby ethanol plant would be a part of a proposed pipeline to carry away carbon dioxide, he was concerned. When he learned the pipeline would run underneath his northeast Iowa farm, he became staunchly opposed.

“This is some of the best farmland the good Lord has entrusted us with to be stewards of,” Reints said. “It's just a shame to think that just for private gain, that they're going to put that scar across our land.”

Three proposed pipeline projects would travel through Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota, taking CO2 from ethanol plants and sending it into Illinois and North Dakota where it would be stored underground. The Biden administration is offering big tax incentives to help the U.S. reach net zero by 2050, which some ethanol proponents say are critical for the industry.

Farmers across the Midwest are fighting the carbon dioxide pipelines — largely over property rights. At the same time, environmentalists are raising concerns over whether carbon capture is the best way to curb emissions, especially compared to other strategies in the energy and agricultural sectors.

Summit Carbon Solutions, Navigator CO2 and Wolf Carbon Solutions — the three companies proposing to capture CO2 from Midwest ethanol plants and pipe it underground — say the projects will lower ethanol’s carbon emissions and help the farming economy.

Monte Shaw, the executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, said the state either needs to be friendly to carbon pipelines or risk devastation for its corn growers and ethanol plants.

“If Iowa screws this up, we’re in big trouble,” Shaw said. “We will absolutely lose a huge chunk of our industry and put the Iowa ag economy in a tailspin.”

Carbon capture and clean fuel production tax credits are promised in the Inflation Reduction Act, a “game changer” for ethanol, Shaw said. It’s expected that ethanol plants that get those tax credits will be able to expand their production. But in order to qualify, the fuel that ethanol plants produce needs to meet certain emissions standards.

California and some other states have fuel standards that are pushing ethanol to lower its carbon emissions. With carbon pipelines, Shaw said, Iowa ethanol plants would survive a critical turning point in the industry’s history. Without pipelines, the state’s ethanol business could be doomed.

“It will create winners and losers,” Shaw said. “It will create plants that stay in business and plants that go out of business. So when we say that it’s life or death for many ethanol plants, that is an honest reality of where we’re at.”

A recent report, paid for by the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, claims if Iowa ethanol plants are not able to participate in carbon capture pipeline projects but ethanol plants in neighboring states can, 75% of Iowa’s ethanol production would be lost to those states in the next five to 10 years, many ethanol plants would shut down, and Iowa’s ethanol industry would lose more than $10 billion a year without carbon capture in the state.

Ethanol is huge in Iowa.

The state is the largest corn producer in the nation and half of Iowa’s corn is used to make ethanol, mostly for gasoline fuel blends.

Yet Reints and many other farmers, as well as environmentalists, say they don’t buy the narrative that ethanol will shrivel up without carbon pipelines. Some point to better ways to sequester carbon or cut it altogether.

The proposals are creating unusual alliances between farmers, such as Reints, who are concerned about property rights and safety, and environmentalists who question whether sequestering CO2 from ethanol is the best way to cut emissions.

In February, farmers from across Iowa gathered at the Iowa State Capitol for a rally calling lawmakers to ban eminent domain, the power of the government to take private land for the carbon pipelines.

Jess Mazour, the conservation program coordinator for the Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club, helped organize the rally. She argues carbon pipelines are not a real solution to climate change.

“There are tried and true ways to solve our climate crisis that are better uses of our public tax dollars than this questionable technology that puts risky pipelines in our backyards, that destroys farmland,” Mazour said.

One way to combat climate change in the ag sector would be for farmers to focus on keeping carbon in the ground, Mazour said. That includes planting more cover crops that enhance soil health and store carbon in the soil.

Asked if carbon pipelines should be a part of efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions in general, Mazour said she doesn’t see it.

“I think rather than putting a Band-Aid on emissions, let’s stop burning them in the first place,” she said.

The three companies proposing pipelines through the Midwest argue capturing CO2 is important to getting the U.S. to net zero emissions.

Summit Carbon Solutions says its proposed 2,000-mile pipeline will be able to capture and store 12 million metric tons of CO2 each year from ethanol plants in Midwest states including Iowa, South Dakota and Minnesota — the equivalent, it says, to taking 2.6 million cars off the road every year.

Wolf Carbon Solutions, which also plans to transport 12 million metric tons of CO2 each year through a 280-mile pipeline running from Iowa to Illinois, says it will “[lower] the carbon intensity of ethanol, bolstering its position as a premier alternative fuel.”

Navigator CO2 is proposing a 1,300-mile pipeline network from South Dakota and Nebraska, through Iowa and into Illinois. Spokesperson Elizabeth Burns-Thompson said Navigator will capture 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

“We will not meet our goals if we don't institute a variety of tools and tactics, carbon capture being one of those,” Burns-Thompson said. “Is it the golden key? No. But when partnered alongside other developments, investments, tools, technologies, that is how we make true progress and we do so in a quantifiable fashion.”

University of Minnesota engineering professor Jason Hill studies the environmental impact of energy and food. He points out that ethanol’s emissions come from multiple sources—not just the production of ethanol. That includes growing corn, producing fertilizer to grow corn, transporting the fuel, distributing it and burning it.

So while the pipelines will mean some calculated reduction of CO2, Hill said it won’t make as big of a difference as advertised.

“When you zoom out and look at the broader implications of pumping that carbon dioxide underground, the picture doesn't look so rosy,” Hill said.

One of the biggest factors he said is that the pipelines perpetuate using liquid fuel for transportation in the long-term.

“When in fact, we know that vehicle electrification, using clean electricity sources or cleaner electricity sources can more quickly get us to our carbon reduction targets,” Hill said.

The Biden administration sees both electric vehicles and carbon capture as key to curbing emissions. The Inflation Reduction Act increased available tax credits, providing $85 per metric ton for CO2 captured and stored, up from the previous $50 offered.

Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed new emissions standards with more stringent tailpipe emissions and estimates that by 2032, 67% of new car and light-duty truck sales will be electric.

Pressure on the ethanol industry — both from lower emission standards and electric vehicles — don’t worry Jeff Reints.

He said even if the ethanol industry did contract somewhat, "We've worked through thousands of other storms in farming. We'd work through that one. Ingenuity will prevail.”

Reints points across the field to a new facility, which breaks soybeans down into soybean oil for renewable diesel.

“Which is a huge new demand coming,” Reints said. “We’ll adapt.”

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

Copyright 2023 KCUR 89.3. To see more, visit KCUR 89.3.

WSIU's Ethan Holder reports on the challenges facing law enforcement and the public, as cyber scams and other online crimes continue to grow.

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